House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) led the attack by saying that the president was merely replacing one kind of child abuse with a different kind of abuse.

“The President’s Executive Order seeks to replace one form of child abuse with another,” Pelosi said in a statement. “Instead of protecting traumatized children, the President has directed his Attorney General to pave the way for the long-term incarceration of families in prison-like conditions.”

Pelos quoted a statement from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops saying that both Republican immigration legislation proposals “perpetuate child detention and undermine existing protections relating to such detention.”

Elizabeth Warren

✔@SenWarren

This isn’t over. Thousands of kids have been ripped from their parents with no plan to reunite them. And now @realdonaldtrump wants to create new detention camps for families. Separating kids is unacceptable – but indefinite imprisonment of families is still cruel & inhumane.

Using terrified small children as leverage to push the President’s anti-immigrant agenda represents an unspeakably appalling moral low-point for our nation,” she added. “Yet, House Republicans continue their complicity in the President’s atrocities and cravenly cheerlead the President’s policy.”

“Thousands of kids have been ripped from their parents with no plan to reunite them,” she added. “And now @realdonaldtrump wants to create new detention camps for families. Separating kids is unacceptable – but indefinite imprisonment of families is still cruel & inhumane.”

“Heartless policy”

Rep. Elijah Cummings added to the furor, saying in a statement, “For weeks the Trump Administration has lied to the American people, claiming over and over again that the President could not stop his heartless policy of ripping infants, babies, and toddlers from their parents’ arms.”

“Today’s reversal addresses the immoral policy of separating children from their families,” he said, “but it retains the ‘zero tolerance’ policy that disregards valid asylum claims, criminally prosecutes everyone, and is completely silent on what will happen to the children already taken from their parents without any recognizable system for reuniting them.”

“Imprisoning families indefinitely”

California gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom said that Trump’s order did not address important questions.

Newsom said the order did not explain how the children were to be reunited with their families, nor did it provided a plan “to create new detention facilities for FAMILIES.”

“Separating kids is sick,” he added, “but so is imprisoning families indefinitely.”